Student learning platform Chegg is betting big on the technology that almost killed it — artificial intelligence.
This month, Chegg is releasing two new AI-powered features intended to help students master the coursework they once sought the platform to simply complete for them, more than two years after the release of ChatGPT crashed its stock. But even companies like Chegg that have been threatened by AI see the technology as key to their future, though it’s unclear if the move will boost sales.
Its new features will generate practice questions on complex materials and allow users to choose their preferred large language models directly on the Chegg site — first ChatGPT, and later Gemini, Llama, and even DeepSeek, CEO Nathan Schultz told Semafor in an exclusive interview.
“In ’25, you’re going to see us continue our mission of: how do we personalize and contextualize?” he said. “How do we leverage our AI systems to do that instantaneously?”
Chegg will display answers to the same question from various AI models and offer insights on why solutions may differ — like if the models took different routes to solve the same calculus problem. Allowing users to compare models and see the reasoning for each is critical to the platform’s success, Schultz said.
Students are already comparing these models because “the trust of AI is really low,” he said. Setting up different accounts and switching between tabs to do so is “an incredible time waste.”
Since building AI into its platform beginning in 2023, Chegg can provide answers instantaneously — and it is now pushing its explanations, comparisons, and practice problems to help students learn the material. An emphasis on the learning process also helps mitigate criticisms that Chegg faced from educators in recent years — that students don’t use the platform to study, but to cheat.
“The bedrock of Chegg is that students can trust the content we’re going to produce for them,” Schultz said. “We’re in education. You can’t get things wrong.”
